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It didn't take long for the intelligence community's best friends in Congress to invoke last week's terrorist attack in Paris, in which 17 people were brutally killed at the offices of a satirical magazine, in the contentious and continuing debate over the National Security Agency's unconstitutional domestic spying programs.

The National Security Agency's vast spying apparatus has been a tremendous hurdle for the United States' still-burgeoning tech industry. Many lawmakers on Capitol Hill are, however, unconcerned with the economic impact of these surveillance programs, making it difficult for meaningful reforms to work their way through Congress.

The Senate is expected to vote on cloture for the USA Freedom Act tonight. There's good and bad parts of the bill. FreedomWorks hopes to see a debate on the floor of the Senate on NSA reform. We are encouraging members to offer amendments to strengthen the bill and curb unconstitutional spying.

Washington, DC- With the U.S. Senate set to hold a cloture vote on whether to proceed to debate on the USA FREEDOM Act, a bill which seeks to rein in the NSA’s unconstitutional and warrantless surveillance, FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe commented:

Washington, DC- The Justice Department is using fake cellphone towers on planes to collect metadata from thousands of innocent Americans without a warrant. The program is meant to target criminals, but the broad nature of the surveillance means that any phone that happens to automatically lock on to the tower's signal will have its data collected, without any suspicion of criminal activity.

The Senate appears to be taking steps to reform the National Security Agency's unconstitutional domestic spying programs. The National Journal reports that Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has filed for cloture on the stronger version of the USA FREEDOM Act introduced in July by Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT).

On Tuesday, the 2nd circuit Federal Appeals Court in New York heard oral arguments on the legality of the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of metadata. Specifically, the case (ACLU v. Clapper) addresses government collection and storage of Americans' phone records – what phone number was called and the duration of the call.

The Obama administration has continuously defended the NSA’s bulk collection of metadata on Americans. President Obama says that it’s not that big of a deal. "When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls,” he says. The Director of National Intelligence James Clapper equates it to simply reading the Dewey Decimal System on the cover of a library book.